A startup called Condition One is working on a way to capture and deploy 180 degree video. I'm wondering how easy it would be to get this content playing on the Oculus Rift. The company thinks that the 'future' is 180 degree content viewed through an iPad or other mobile device, but I think most of you here will agree with me that that is a joke! We all know HMDs are where the true immersion lies!

Details here: http://roadtovr.wordpress.com/2012/06/1 ... ulus-rift/

Would like to read more but the dumb filter is ruining your link.

http://tinyurl.com/cnpc4x2

And Hello by the way
I'm here after having seen the show of John Carmack! Curious about it as everyone

Thank you ThePhilosopher.

Video seemed cool, it would be a good fit for an HMD (albeit without stereo).

Definitely seems interesting, but I agree - I'd love to see videos shot with their tech put on an HMD with a wide FOV. It kind of reminds me of those 360 degree cams. http://tinyurl.com/7jdbgby -- This page has a couple of vids shot in 360 degrees that you can swipe to rotate in realtime, there's a bit of distortion and stretching, but overall, it's pretty cool

You guys think there is any way to record 360 degree stereo video? Because a big problem is that with 2 camera the lens attachments will block a good portion of the view.

I think 360 degree stereo could be managed with multiple binocular optic arrangements rotated in a circle, which are pieced together like a panoramic but for each eye. The simple conical (ish) reflector method would not work though, because the stereo separation would only work when facing 1 direction (they will still be occluding each other with an arrangement such as I will describe below, but minimally).


If you just want 360 degree view per eye, but with the stereo separation fixed (this would give you a 180 degree FOV facing forward or backwards, but no ability to rotate) you could construct a setup like this:

/__\ camera 1 /__\ camera 2
/^\ reflector 1 /^\ reflector 2

in the video the reflectors would only see each other at the 180 degree towards each other angle, which is more crosseyed that we can do, this would be occluded by the nose bridge. It could be possible to even fill this in with software from the other camera, as it is a distance perspective shift, without parallax, and the projection difference shouldn't be noticable (I think).

In order to get panoramic video working with the RIFT, it might be possible to import the video footage into the Unity engine and play the video on a spherical plane with the POV in the center. Something like this is already being implemented with FOV2GO scripts and the iPhone / Android, but it can only be done with a stereoscopic panoramic still image, not video:

http://projects.ict.usc.edu/mxr/diy/fov2go-developer/

But I'm not sure if its physically possible to do both stereoscopic 3D and 360 video capture, given the fact that you need SBS cameras to record the footage and the cameras would inherently block each other partially.

What about positional movement? If real-life 360 video were to be a supplement for VR in a photorealistic graphics engine, it could always be explored with orientational movement. However, due to the nature of being pre-recorded video, it would be physically impossible to move directionally within the "environment" (ie, be positionally tracked) like you can in a real-time engine. Unless the video wasn't pre-recorded and you were experiencing the POV of a moving robot!